About this column

Steve Chapple’s Intellectual Capital covers game-changing people, ideas and perspectives. His columns, which appear once a month in the U-T business section, are entertaining visits with some of the smartest minds around San Diego. Contact him at intellectualcapitalchapple@gmail.com.

The view is long from the top of UCSD’s Atkinson Hall and optimistic.

“The last 30 years have been spectacular,” says Dick Atkinson, dubbed the school’s entrepreneurial president, “but the next 30 will be stunning.”

Atkinson was the chancellor of University of California San Diego from 1980 to 1995. The building, which houses the Calit2 Innovation Center, is named for him. He was president of all the UCs from 1995 to 2003 and before that was director of the National Science Foundation from 1975 to 1980.

Atkinson started at Stanford as a cognitive psychologist with a data-based distaste for the SAT (which he would later fundamentally change) and a keen interest in how Stanford Provost Fred Terman was creating what would become Silicon Valley, mightily transforming Stanford, “a good regional university,” into a world-renowned institution.

Lately, Atkinson has come to be called the “entrepreneurial president,” (the title of Patricia Pelfrey’s new biography of him) because he developed and nurtured the process of transferring university research to private industry in an ever-negotiated dance that has enriched both universities and local individuals, transformed higher education and, not least, catapulted sunny little San Diego onto a very big stage, indeed.

Along with Menlo Park and Cambridge, Mass., San Diego is now one of America’s three centers of innovation, Atkinson believes.

“It’s a great time,” he says. “We are on the verge of some very big developments, with longevity and good health a new reality, the ability of just about anyone to acquire whatever information or knowledge they are interested in on the Web, and the genetics revolution.”

To Atkinson, the Internet age has only just begun. Biotechnology is ramping up. “It will make for a very interesting world,” he says. “I wish I were (going to be) around,” says Atkinson, a lean 83.

“The high-tech industry seems to be doing well,” he points out. “Yet it is doing well because there is this flow of new ideas coming out of the universities.”

“Yet, how many people in California realize UCSD gets only 9 percent of its funding from the state?” he asks. “That’s crucial, of course, and we have paid tuition, of course, but over a billion dollars a year comes from federal funding for science and medical research to our talented faculties and labs.” That later flows out to the city when tech companies are formed, he explains.

“Dick was the driving inspiration in forming CONNECT,” the large San Diego nonprofit that nurtures links between area universities, life science and high-tech startups and corporations, says its current CEO, Duane Roth.

But just because high-paying high-tech jobs will lead America’s economy, in Atkinson’s opinion, that doesn’t necessarily lift all boats. “I do worry about long-term unemployment,” says Atkinson.

“I think what you are going to see is the manufacturing industry moving back to the United States. But it is going to be heavily driven by robotics, and printing on demand. That is, being able to print objects and devices on demand. That may lead to a real difficulty in the sense that we may have the kind of unemployment that we have today becoming almost a permanent aspect of the society. I hope that is not the case. People have made these predictions in the past, and the predictions have failed when the economy starts to move.”